| The little stores you shop in, your go-to restaurants and coffee shops and bakeries, the gym where they know your name—these are the touchstones that just a few weeks ago gave life some of its texture and richness. In the best of times they operate on thin margins. In the midst of the pandemic, as Garrett Graff writes this week on Backchannel, many of them are scuffling. Or they have already given up and shut their doors forever. As part of his ongoing oral history project, Covid Spring, Graff spoke with dozens of small business owners. The contours of their woe may be familiar by now, but the power of their collected voices highlights the scale and very human impact of this rolling catastrophe. The main street on the other side of the pandemic—a time that will arrive, sooner or later—will be almost unrecognizable. Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED |
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